The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Romance is one fiction genre that I generally try to stay away from. I’m just not really interested in reading about sappy love affairs. Sure, there have been fantastic romance novels — true classics — produced along the way (Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice immediately come to mind), but by and large the genre conjures up images of those cheesy Harlequin numbers.

Against my better judgment, I gave in and read The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks a little while ago. Several of my friends gushed about it, so I decided it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. I actually read it with an open mind and I wanted to like it so I could have a book discussion with my friends (a rare occurrence since we have such different tastes), but I just couldn’t. This had to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read.

The Notebook tells the story of Noah and Allie, who first meet as high school kids in the 1930s or 1940s. It’s pretty much love at first sight for Noah, but Allie takes a bit longer to warm up to him. Of course, there are complications for the couple right from the start. For one thing — and stop me if you’ve heard this before — Noah is from a poor, working-class family while Allie comes from money. For another thing — again, stop me if you’ve heard this before — Allie’s family isn’t sticking around forever; they’ll be moving back home at the end of the summer.

So Noah and Allie decide to make the most of their time together. They spend nearly every waking moment with each other, and by the time summer ends, they’re completely in love. Did I mention that Noah was 17 at the time and Allie was 15?

Anyway, after Allie moves back home with her family, Noah writes letters to her. He never gets a response because — hey, please stop me if you’ve heard this before! — Allie’s mother hides the letters before Allie can see them. Despite the fact that Noah never hears back, he keeps on writing. He sends 365 letters in all: one per day for an entire year. Although Noah moves forward with his life, he never forgets about Allie. They go 15 years without seeing or hearing from each other, then one day she suddenly shows up on his doorstep.

From that point on, The Notebook tells about how Allie must choose between marrying her fiance or getting back together with Noah. I’m sure you can guess which one she chooses! After that the author brings the action back to the present and deals with another storyline that I won’t reveal here.

I had so many problems with The Notebook that I hardly know where to begin. For instance, I felt Sparks did a terrible job creating these two characters. They seemed two-dimensional and were unsympathetic, so I never really warmed up to them. In addition, I had a hard time imagining that the bulk of the action in the book took place during the 1940s. Sparks didn’t do anything to establish that time period. The characters acted and talked like modern creations, which was very confusing to me.

And finally, I just never “got” why or how these two people fell in love. In a story like this, it’s critical that the author show the reader how the characters were in love. Instead, Sparks was content merely to repeat the phrase over and over again. For those of you that have read the book: can you think of one defining action (besides the keeping of the notebook, which happens when Noah and Allie are 80) that showed you how much Noah loved Allie or vice versa? I can’t remember any such moments in The Notebook.

Because of these problems, I give this book 2.5 stars out of 10. I am having a hard time understanding how The Notebook could have spent more than a year on the NY Times Bestsellers list….